Newly Minted
by stereolightning
Summary: Immediately following the end of Voldemort and a quick conference with Dumbledore's portrait, Harry, Ron, and Hermione stumble off to bed and to sleep and to the rest of their lives. Ron and Hermione still have things to figure out. But it's not quite now or never. In the hours after victory, they finally have time for long-overdue affection. [Rated M]


_**A/N** This story contains scenes of a sexual nature. Nothing graphic, but please do not read on if you are likely to be offended._

* * *

Harry falls asleep almost the instant his unwashed black hair hits the pillow in his four-poster. The great errand is done. Voldemort is dead.

Ron yawns. Hermione removes Harry's glasses and sets them on his dresser. Her whole face hurts from crying – all the way to the backs of her sinuses. _Professor Lupin. Fred. Tonks. _And there were too many others to count.

Ron buries himself in a nest of pillows and blankets on his four-poster, blithely pilfering bedclothes from other, unused beds by summoning them with his wand. Neville, Dean, and Seamus will hardly care – unlike Ron and Harry and Hermione, they have probably slept in the last forty-eight hours, and are probably still downstairs hugging and grieving and toting around the Sword of Gryffindor. At the feast this morning, Hermione had thought they looked like knights of the round table – Neville as Sir Gawain, definitely.

"Really, Ron? Four pillows?" she asks, fluttering her eyelashes for emphasis.

"I want to sleep for ages," he says. "In a real bed, with all the trimmings."

"Yes, I think I'll do the same," she says, starting for the door, for the girls' dormitories, wondering if Parvati can spare a duvet or two.

He catches her forearm. "Stay," he says.

He can barely keep his eyelids from drooping, and he's got dirt on his nose. Just _there_. Just as he did on the train, when they first met.

"Alright," she says, unable to tell him about the dirt, because in truth, it's endearing.

She unties her shoes. He finishes building his nest with her in it. Smiling hurts, but she does it anyway. He tucks one freckly finger into the belt loop of her jeans, hitching his hand and her hip together as they both fall unconscious, but that's as far as it goes.

…

She wakes at sunset. Sometime in the last few hours, Ginny crawled in next to Harry, and they're whispering a thousand private and sacred things to each other. The contents of their hearts. Promises. Apologies.

Kreacher left sandwiches.

…

After nightfall, Hermione wakes again. She visits the prefects' bathroom, pleased to be able to bathe at last. Undressing, she notices a smear of rust-colored blood on her shirt – Snape's? Ron's? Impossible to say.

She draws a bath and soaks for so long that the skin on her toes and fingertips bunches up. Distantly, she hears a late spring storm rumble, and she glances out the stained glass window. Hermione has a fleeting mental image of blood washing away from sticky stone. Refilling the bath from the hot tap, she dunks her head under water, closing her eyes and tasting lavender-scented soap. Let it all be cleansed. Let it all be baptized.

Still underwater, she blows bubbles and listens to them rise and burble and pop.

As she surfaces, a clap of thunder vibrates through the castle.

Then there's a knock at the door.

"It's me," says Ron's voice. "Can I come in?"

She considers this. "Yes," she says, after a long pause. She floats to the edge of the bath and waves her wand at the locked door. He opens it, grinning through his haze of grief, and shuts it quickly. She locks it with another flick of her wand.

She didn't use the ornate taps that gush with thick, luxurious bubbles – it had felt unnecessary after the year living in a tent and the borrowed minutes in the spartan bathroom at Shell Cottage – so she's well aware that he can see her breasts clearly. But he doesn't comment on them, or stare, or blush.

Instead, he undresses and says, "Mum wants us to come to the Burrow. Harry agrees. What do you think? Do you want to set off for Australia straightaway?"

"I agree with Harry," she says. "Nothing can have changed, so I think they'll be alright for a little while longer. But I should go soon. I've read that memory charms can grow stronger with time."

"_We_ should go soon, you mean," he says, easing into the bath.

He submerges himself completely, red hair becoming a rippling, kelp-like patch under the water.

"Yes. _We_," she says, knowing full well he can't hear.

He comes up for air and swims closer to her, wiping soapy water out of his eyes.

They've never been naked in front of each other before. He has freckles and scars, some she knew about, some she didn't. A shallow depression remains on his upper arm from when he splinched himself as they fled the Ministry. Also, he has a birthmark – a "coffee stain," she remembers this type is called, because it's amorphous and light brown – running across his thigh. She can feel the heat radiating from him – he's actually steaming, though maybe that's from the bathwater – and she falls into him like a meteor crashing into a sun.

He runs his thumb along her jaw and presses back gently, tilting her chin up, kissing her exposed throat. She slides both her hands along his ribs, onto his back, across his shoulder blades.

A crack of green lightning makes them both jump, thinking of killing curses (they have seen enough of those for a lifetime), and then they laugh, realizing it's only weather. These are morbid laughs, darkly humorous laughs, but also laughs of release. She feels his muscles tense and relax with each huff of laughter. She presses her nose into his shoulder, giggling. He pulls her close, and she instinctively slides her thighs along the outsides of his, crossing her ankles behind him. He makes a noise that lies somewhere on the continuum between moan and hum and then resumes kissing her neck. He nudges gently at one of her breasts, and asks her permission to keep touching her, and she mumbles her assent. They writhe for a while – not thrashing, just melting together. Her blood rushes to her sex, and she feels his body respond the same way.

"God, Hermione, I want to," he says, with mingled longing and protest. "I mean you're – fucking – gorgeous – but –"

"It's alright," she says, covering his mouth with her finger. "This is enough. We have time. We have so much time."

"More than I thought we were going to get, at times, to be honest," he says darkly.

She strokes his wet hair and nods. "It isn't now or never anymore. It's just now. Not never."

His lips meet hers again. She feels the corners of his mouth wiggling indecisively between smiling with pleasure and frowning with thought. They kiss for a long time. He snogs differently from Viktor. Better. Subtler. Who would have thought Ron capable of _subtlety_? But he is.

He pulls back, apparently having made up his mind. "Let me bring you off," he says.

Her chest tightens and flutters and flushes pink.

"Is that alright?" he asks, tensing his eyebrows together a fraction.

"Yes," she says, the hint of a squeak in her voice.

His eyes brighten and a happy little smirk plays across his face. "Sit up there. I can't hold my breath that long."

She blushes. "Oh. I didn't know you meant – "

"Yeah, I did," he says. "Up to you, though. If this is too soon – "

"No, it's fine. It's more than fine. It's just new."

"I know. But it also isn't. I mean, how long have we both known?"

"Ages."

"Yeah."

Remembering their long, rocky courtship, and its recent conclusion, they squeeze each other and kiss again. Minutes pass like this. His skin is bright pink from the hot water. Her desire crests again.

"Alright, I'm getting out," she says at last. She feels her pulse quicken in her neck and fingers. She smiles, nervous.

He grins up at her from the bath as she sits down at the tiled edge. She appreciates for the first time how steamy the room has become; the vapor curls through the air and forms a translucent curtain, obscuring the door and window. He kisses her knees and tugs her closer to the edge of the bath. She scoots her hips forward. Then, deftly, he slides both hands along the insides of her thighs and hinges her knees apart. He, too, moves closer to the edge of the bath, breathing hard. He flicks his eyes up to hers, probably wanting to make sure she hasn't changed her mind. She trembles a bit, but she's not having second thoughts. She smiles again and he mirrors her expression back to her.

"Lie back, if you want," he says.

She does. The tile is warm. Above her, there is nothing to see but steam. She closes her eyes.

She feels his fingers first. Actually, thumbs – both of them – spreading her open delicately. She had expected him to be rougher, less precise, but something has refined his technique, and it's either _Twelve Fail-safe Ways to Charm Witches_ or a frank piece of advice from one of his brothers or tips he picked up from Lavender Brown, and she doesn't want to think about any of those possibilities at the moment, so she lets her mind drift. She recalls as many digits of pi as she can. She lists all of Golpalott's laws in her head. For a split second she wonders where Harry is – because the three of them haven't been apart in months, excepting the time Harry _died_ and then returned, like Lazarus, or Aslan – but then she remembers he's still in bed in his dormitory, and the odds are good that he's kissing Ginny quite a lot right now.

All is forgotten when Ron's mouth makes contact. Abstract colors and shapes flash across her mind's eye as pleasure plays through her. A burst of white when his tongue strays to the left and back again. A shock of purple as he slips a long finger inside and slowly, slowly twists it within her. _Synesthesia_ is the next word that pops into her head. He breathes against her thighs. Lightning flashes again.

He decodes her desires quickly, finding a rhythm and pattern of touch that suits her. She whimpers, and the sound echoes off the tile. He senses her need changing and increases the pace a tiny amount. Heat blossoms inside her, and as she comes, her field of vision bursts with stars and lightning bugs. She pants. He sighs, triumphant. Then her orgasm snaps back like a rubber band and suddenly she's weeping. Hot, violent sobs. He raises himself up, clambers over the edge of the bath, and pulls her into him, holding her, stroking her hair.

"What's wrong?" he asks.

What _isn't_ wrong? Friends are dead. Families are rent apart. This horrible ordeal is over, but there are infinite pieces to pick up and fit back together, and the truth is, some things will never be right again. Her grief and empathy are almost tangible for a moment. Then she catches her breath and exhales.

"Too soon?" he asks.

She shakes her head. "No. It's not too soon. That was lovely. It isn't about that." She finds his hand and squeezes it in hers. "I sometimes cry, after. It's the rush of oxytocin. You know, the bonding hormone. This is quite a bit stronger than usual, though."

Satisfied, assuaged, he nuzzles her neck and the back of her ear. Weasleys must be full of oxytocin, as a rule, as their birthright, she thinks.

For a while they lay there cuddling, and talking, and eventually she brings him off, too, fevered and erect and slipping through her fist. He swears loudly and creatively when he comes. Then they laugh at the mad things he uttered, both shaking with mirth and temporarily empty of any thoughts outside this steamy bathroom.

A final crack of lightning reminds them of Harry, and of their obligations to him and to everyone else in the castle and beyond. They dry off and dress, shooting grins at one another as they pull on their clothes. They brush their teeth together, side-by-side, at the sink. This is the first time they've ever done this; they never did in Grimmauld Place, or the tent, or Shell Cottage. This intimacy is pleasant in a way entirely different from the writhing and kissing. And not just because she's the daughter of dentists.

_Spearmint toothpaste_.

She had smelled spearmint in that cauldron of _Amortentia_ in Slughorn's classroom in sixth year – and oh, it feels like lifetimes have passed since then. She takes Ron's hand and weaves her fingers through his, a weft of love and affection. She ties her hair up and they begin to make their way back to Harry, and Ginny, and the world.

Somehow they will discover how to be normal people again, she thinks. People who are not hunting and being hunted. But in this daunting task, as in almost every other task they have faced in the last seven years, they have the benefit of each other's company.

They walk hand-in-hand back to Gryffindor tower, smelling of soap and mint and sex. Clean and smiling, as if they are just randy students sneaking back to their dormitories after a midnight rendez-vous. As if there aren't five dozen corpses covered in white spring flowers and preserved in careful spellwork a few floors below them. As if they are not Significant People in Interesting Times.

As Hermione shuts the door to the boys' room behind Ron, Harry sits up in bed and raises one eyebrow ever so slightly at them – amused. She's too tactful to ask in front of Ron where Ginny has gone, because it's clear Ginny was just here from the small red mark on Harry's neck that was most certainly not put there by any foe.

In the Great Hall and the night sky, Mars dims at last, and Venus flares.


End file.
